


Joe

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [11]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Dollhouse - Fandom
Genre: Crossover, Gen, M/M, not actually RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-26 11:54:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6237589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the <a class="i-ljuser-profile" href="http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/profile"><img class="i-ljuser-userhead"/></a><a class="i-ljuser-username" href="http://comment-fic.livejournal.com/">comment_fic</a> prompt: "Any, any, sensory stimulation." Joe is so lonely he can't stand it. He couldn't go anywhere else but to Evan Lorne. Set in Season 5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Joe

Evan Lorne considered himself a good XO for three reasons: he knew how to listen well, he knew how to get things done, and he knew when to keep his mouth shut. He listened to the scientists complain about McKay, and he figured out what they really wanted was not to defenestrate McKay but for some peace once in a while, so he scheduled regular city exploration dates for McKay with just Sheppard, and the scientists were happy. He listened to Sheppard grumble about the constant stream of emails the IOA and Homeworld Sec bombarded him with in the weekly databursts and understood that Sheppard wasn't lazy, or stupid, or disdainful of paperwork, but he was in a unique position as military commander, gate team leader, and primary initiator of Atlantis, and he only had enough energy, mental and physical, to deal with the essentials of running Atlantis, so Evan took care of the rest. Evan knew the engineers were building an alcohol still at the top of tower four based on plans borrowed from the Athosians, and he said nothing so long as no one on the base imbibed while on duty.

For all that Evan did his best to be the kind of XO Atlantis needed, he was still human, and contrary to popular belief that he was psychically linked to all of Atlantis and knew all that went on in her limits, he could be surprised. When someone initiated the lock on his door late one night before his scheduled Sunday, he was startled out of his contemplation of a photograph of an Athosian sunset he planned on using as a study for a new painting. The door hissed open, and Sheppard stood there in a black t-shirt and pajama pants. His non-regulation hair was wilder than usual. And the look in his eyes was - frantic. Frenetic. Desperate.

Evan was on his feet in an instant. "Sir?"

"Evan."

The sound of his first name from his commanding officer when no one used it (he was beginning to think no one knew it) drew him up short. "Sir?" he asked again.

Sheppard stumbled over the threshold into his room, and the door hissed shut behind him. "Evan, I need –" He closed his eyes and shook his head, and his chest was rising and falling with panicked breaths. When he opened his eyes, the desperate expression was gone, and Evan was left with the sense that the calm in the other man's eyes was the calm before the storm.

"Sir, do I need to call medical?"

"Don't call me that, not here, not now. Please." Sheppard's voice was barely above a whisper, hoarse. He caught Evan's wrist and dragged him close, until Evan's palm was pressed over his rapidly beating heart.

"What should I call you, then?" They were treading on dangerous territory, the kind of minefield that could end a good man's career in Leavenworth and a lifetime of disgrace.

"Call me Joe."

That was the lid of Pandora's box, but Evan would roll with it. "What is it you need, Joe?" Unless Sheppard had suffered a psychotic break and Evan really did need to call medical?

The serenity in his eyes was uncanny. "I need you to touch me."

Yep, no doubt about it, there were still things in this city that could surprise Evan. But there would be a world of trouble if he called medical and reported Sheppard, so that was off the table. Should he call the base psychologist? There were confidentiality rules that would protect Sheppard.

"Evan," Sheppard said softly, and Evan was jolted by use of his name again, only the second time he'd heard it since he'd come to Atlantis, "I'm not crazy. It's all me in here, I promise." The corner of his mouth curled up in amusement, as if at some private joke.

Evan was open-minded. He couldn't have been anything otherwise, not with the way he was raised. And John Sheppard was a beautiful man. Evan could appreciate that beyond his dispassionate artistic sensibility. But just because Evan was open-minded didn't mean he didn't have a sense of commitment, and he didn't do casual lightly, especially not with his commanding officer on a military base in another galaxy where their continued survival depended on their ability to function as a team. Any dysfunction in the team could spell disaster for everyone in the expedition. (Sheppard and McKay's constant bickering somehow added to the functionality of the expedition. But that was another story for another time.)

Evan took a deep breath. "I'm not in love with you." So many of the marines were, in one way or another, star-struck by the heroic John Sheppard, just as so many had been enamored of Jack O'Neill back home under the mountain. Evan was in love with someone else, an old ghost, someone who he had no chance of seeing ever again.

"I'm not asking you to be, but I need this."

Evan studied Sheppard. At first blush he was perfectly calm, but his ram-rod straight posture could have come out of the Air Force manual for standing at attention. Sheppard definitely needed something, but if his needs conflicted with what was best for Atlantis, then he ought to deny himself. Evan would. Evan often did. (Another story, another time.)

"Sir," he began.

"Joe."

"Right. Joe, I'm not sure I can do this. What you're asking is –" Dangerous. More than a little scary.

"I'm not asking for anything that runs afoul of regulations." Sheppard took a deep breath. "But I need –" He swallowed hard. "I'm so alone I can't stand it."

Evan winced internally at how much that admission must have cost the man standing before him. "And you think I can do this? And not mess up Atlantis completely?"

"I know you can do it and do it right."

Was there any way to do this right? Even if there was, dare he do it?

And then he remembered his sister Natalia, describing the endorphin rush and sometimes involuntary arousal of getting a tattoo. He remembered hours painstakingly tracing henna patterns onto her skin and her friends' skin at dozens of sleepovers (lamest way to be the only boy at his older sister's sleepovers). That kind of touch was intimate, the connection formed not just by physical closeness but by intent, the intent to create art and beauty. One of the marines was handy with a tattoo gun, and more than one kid had picked up some ink commemorating his time in Pegasus. The idea coalescing in Evan's mind was pushing that boundary, but if he kept his mouth shut and his head down, he could get away with this. They could get away with this.

Sheppard's composure was starting to crack. Fine tremors wracked his frame, and the calm in his eyes was starting to fracture around the edges, turning into a fevered daze.

Evan made his decision. "All right, Joe. Here's what I need you to do."

Sheppard was surprisingly compliant and unquestioning. He stripped off his clothes while Evan laid a towel on the bed. Then he lay down on the towel and held preternaturally still while Evan shaved his chest and thighs. While Evan worked, his mind rushed feverishly. What could he do? What should he paint? Sheppard wasn't a teenage girl, and he wasn't some new-age wannabe yoga guru interested in culturally appropriating henna designs. No, henna wasn't the answer. Tribal designs or even geometric designs weren't either. Luckily for Sheppard, Evan had a stash of fancy face paints his sister had sent to him so he could paint local children's faces as a gesture of good will (she thought he was stationed in some war-torn zone on a super secret classified mission).

"Do you trust me?" Evan asked.

"I couldn't go anywhere else."

Couldn't wasn't the same as wouldn't. There was somewhere else he wanted to go, somewhere even more dangerous than his XO's quarters. It wasn't a great answer, but it was something Evan could work with. He nodded. Onward ho.

Henna tattoos were less like painting and more like cake decorating, because the henna was dispensed from tiny foil cones like icing bags. Evan had never painted a person like this, and he looked forward to the challenge, to making the images work with the contours of flesh and limbs. He lined up his paintbrushes, several cups of water, and the paint. And he began to work.

The first time his paintbrush skated across Sheppard's ribs, he inhaled sharply, and Evan jerked the paintbrush away before the line was spoiled.

"I need you to hold still."

"Of course. Sorry."

And then Sheppard did hold still. Evan didn't think it was possible to hold that still given the sensations Sheppard must have been feeling, but he didn't twitch a limb while Evan worked, starting along his left ribs and working across his chest toward his right. Once the main painting was done - of the Pegasus night sky, complete with the new Pegasus constellations - he would move down to Sheppard's thighs and build in an Athosian sunrise and an Atlantis sunset. There was no doubt Sheppard was being affected by the gentle sweep and tickle of the paintbrushes against his skin. His nipples hardened immediately after Evan swept a brush over one of them, and Sheppard bit his lip when Evan painted over the other one. The most obvious sign of Sheppard's pleasure at the sensations Evan was creating across his skin was his slow and steady arousal, hardening by degrees with each sweep of one of the larger brushes. Natalia had warned Evan about how to handle this; she'd had trouble the first few times she was giving tattoos right after she opened her own parlor, but she'd learned to be unsurprised, mostly uninterested, and reassuring.

"Just a normal reaction," Evan said as casually as he could muster. "These brushes must feel pretty weird."

Only Sheppard closed his eyes and whined in the back of his throat.

For all that McKay made jokes about Sheppard being Kirk, as far as Evan knew - and he knew just about everything that happened on base, whether he wanted to or not - Sheppard wasn't getting any on the regular, or he was discrete beyond belief. Evan couldn't imagine how long Sheppard had gone without, but then he also couldn't imagine that Sheppard would compromise his command by having casual flings with anyone, not with people on base in his chain of command or Pegasus natives, whose goodwill was a necessary component of the expedition's continued presence in the galaxy.

Evan wondered, again, whether his agreement to Sheppard's request had compromised the entire expedition. He remembered the desperate look in Sheppard's eyes, and he'd seen the way Sheppard was keeping himself so very, very still, like one wrong move would send Evan running and screaming into the night. Evan still wasn't sure that wasn't the best course of action.

But he said, very carefully, "I can't let you mess up my painting."

Sheppard offered a tiny nod.

"Don't take this the wrong way."

Sheppard nodded again.

Evan set down his paintbrush, stood up and stretched, wondering at how well his knees had taken him kneeling for so long beside the bed. He went and rummaged in the bathroom for his box of condoms. He peered at the expiration date on the side of the box, but that was moot, because Atlantis's calendar didn't match Earth's. He ripped open one of the packets and knelt beside Sheppard once more, and then he narrated in a low, clinical tone, what he was doing so as not to surprise the man. A full-body shudder ripped through Sheppard at Evan's first touch, but then he was back to holding himself utterly still while Evan rolled the condom on deftly. He pinched the tip for a reservoir, and then he sat back on his haunches.

"Ready?" Evan wasn't sure he was. It had been so long since he'd done that to himself, let alone with another man. His pulse stuttered.

Sheppard nodded.

Too late to turn back now. Evan picked up his paintbrush and resumed working his way down Sheppard's torso. Sheppard was still perfectly motionless, but Evan could hear his breath becoming ragged, irregular.

Natalia had never warned him about this. It had never gone this far for her at the tattoo parlor. If it became absolutely necessary she'd excuse her client to the bathroom at the back and let him take care of things himself. What the hell had Evan been thinking, with the condom and the touching and – Evan passed his paintbrush over the crease between hip and thigh, Sheppard gasped loudly. Evan yanked his paintbrush back from Sheppard's skin, and Sheppard came.

Damn, damn, damn, what to do? Evan should look away. He should cover his eyes. He had to –

Sheppard in orgasm was a work of art. A delicate flush spread from the lines of his cheekbones down his neck to the hollow of his throat. His lips turned blood red, parted as he panted in silent ecstasy. His eyelashes formed dark crescents against his cheeks, and the curve of his spine as he arched from head to toe was flawless.

Evan stood up and stretched, turned away to close his eyes and mentally consider his painting while Sheppard came down from his orgasm. After what felt like an eternity but was probably only a couple of minutes, Evan turned back to Sheppard. Sheppard had sunk back down onto the towel, and he'd turned his head away, gnawing on his bottom lip.

Evan had never considered himself particularly stupid or self-deluding, but he must have been insane if he'd thought he could pass this off to a jury in a court-martial as just kind of like giving a guy a tattoo. But he'd come this far. Onward ho. (That was a stupid philosophy, really. The military had provisions for running like hell when it was the best - or only - thing to do. Evan had learned about it in officer training. Strategic reposition to the rear.)

Once again, Evan narrated clinically as he removed the condom, threw it away, and cleaned Sheppard off. Sheppard twitched a few times under his hands, but he kept his eyes closed and his face turned resolutely away from Evan. Was he embarrassed? This had been his idea.

Evan couldn't think of anything else to say, so he kept on painting.

After that, Sheppard drowsed, drifted in and out of sleep, but Evan continued painting, because he was pretty sure this was going to be one of the most fantastic things he'd ever painted, and even if no one was going to see it, he had to finish it. In for a penny, in for a pound.

Hours later, it finally was finished. Evan's knees and thighs and feet ached, all of his paintbrushes were dirty, his towel was a lost cause, and his wrists hurt. But Sheppard's body was beautiful.

And the early morning light was perfect for pictures, so Evan dug his camera out of his bag of art supplies, unscrewed the lens cap, and clicked away. He was ever so careful not to take pictures of anything but the painting, to shoot at angles to best capture the images and not the face or hands or other identifying features of the man who'd been his canvas. When he was satisfied that he'd captured the painting as completely as possible, he set about cleaning up his painting supplies, and then he stretched out on the floor and slept.

When he woke hours later, his bed was empty, his room was empty, and his paint-spattered towel was in the laundry hamper. When he went to shower, the last traces of the Pegasus night sky were swirling down the drain. When he saw Sheppard later that day, heading for an unoccupied balcony to practice his golf swing, Evan said nothing, and Sheppard said nothing, and Evan was okay with that, that day and every day that followed.

Until he discovered what Sergeant Ceccoli was working on in his spare time.


End file.
